


Vergesslichkeit

by e_p_hart



Category: Classical Music RPF
Genre: Classical Music, Gen, Heaven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 12:18:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1304656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/e_p_hart/pseuds/e_p_hart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time	 <br/>I have been half in love with easeful Death,	 <br/>Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,	 <br/>To take into the air my quiet breath;	 <br/>Now more than ever seems it rich to die..."</p>
<p>John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vergesslichkeit

The first time I hear him is from afar.

 

I walk; now I have whatever amount of time to do as I like; and I like to walk, and to think. Sometimes my thoughts turn to the darker things-- the ride, the betrayal, the last night of feeling as though my lungs, my organs belonged to someone not myself-- and this is one such time.

 

It does not seem to matter how far I walk; the scenery never changes: it is always green and beautiful, with the slightest hint of mist, of blending, far off in the distance, like an oil painting whose edges fade off into nothingness.

 

Sometimes on these walk of infinity I meet people. I meet strange people, people of all shapes and sizes and colours, and who have strange memories--those who choose to speak with me and not simply ignore me, too lost in their own, perhaps dark, memories. For myself, I am more content to listen, choosing my own words carefully, speaking only to ask a question to spur my rememberer onward.

 

More often than not, I meet no one.

 

And my dark thoughts consume me, as now.

 

There is silence all round-- no birds to sing, no whispering wind that rustles the green landscape, when suddenly I hear-- I hear the melody of my thoughts, floating gently through the air. I cannot see from whence it comes; I am stopped still, and I collapse to sit on the soft grass, enchanted and fearful of moving lest I lose the strain of music.

 

It promises nothing and yet I remain, entranced.

 

As I listen, it grows fainter and fainter until I am left alone, alone with only its memory and my remaining thoughts.

 

This is the first time.

 

The second time is from near, from just outside my window.

 

I have a house, here among the oil-painting landscape. It is a comfortable little house, with a pantry that is always stocked-- though I seldom remember or feel the need to eat-- and a beautiful, blooming garden. There is a plum tree in this garden, and a bench where I like to sit underneath the strange sky that is nearly sunlight. After long bouts of sitting beneath it, I feel-- almost breathless, as though I spent a long time straining to remember something I have long forgotten. Even so, I enjoy very much my contemplations beneath this tree.

 

The second story of the little white house contains my bedchamber, and, as the weather is always quite mild and it never rains, I leave my window open as I sleep, so I must not be separated from the beautiful garden below. A little strand of ivy has begun to shyly creep in through the window, unsure of welcome.

 

I sleep when I feel I must, and I have odd, disconcerting dreams. I dream of people and places that I should not have forgotten and should not remember, I dream of battles and of peace and of poetry-- most of all I dream of poetry, and wake, drowning in verses.

 

I never write these down. I feel no use in it.

 

One morning-- although the light never really changes-- I wake from sleep lilting on song.

 

It is a curious song, altogether longing and fulfilled, as though of two minds, and rising towards some ringing statement of truth. I throw off the shakles of the bed-clothes and rush to the window; the mist seems stronger then, and I cannot see who makes this song, I cannot find the cause of the melody.

 

The third time, I meet the musician.

 

I stumble down an ordinary paved street, lined with fences and houses, and the music begins anew. I grow angry, feeling blown about like a leaf in a hurricane, and I suddenly see into one of the houses, the front windows thrown wide: a man, playing the piano softly, as though he were trying to remember the tune. The gate hums to itself as I pass, and I lean through the windows and catch his attention.

 

His name, he says, is Franz, and he is trying to write a song, or to remember a song, but cannot recall the words. He strums the piano lightly, making it ring like a bell, and adds that he has been trying for the longest time to write this song.

 

I do my best to help him. What was the poem about? I ask. He does not remember. Was it happy or sad? I ask. He cannot recall. What _do_ you remember?

 

I remember, he declares, that it was magnificent. That it was beauty solidified into words, nature itself captured by human language, beauty made truth-- and that I wrote the most wonderful melody for it, that would make anyone weep just after hearing the first note.

 

I tell him that for all his fancy words he is not a poet, and he roars with laughter. Well, then, he says, come inside and see if you can do better. And he turns back to the keys and dissolves once more into melancholy and gloom. I do enter, and I ensconce myself in a chair, and I half-listen to him play and make the occasional comment as I order words in my head. When it is finished, I repeat it to him.

 

He stills on the bench for a moment, stiff and unbreathing. The next moment-- the slight twitch of his fingers reveals the melody my words apply to, and it is indeed so beautiful that the very first note brings tears to my eyes. Franz ghosts softly my words to the melody, and when it is done he sits in silence.

 

We both sit in silence.

 

Eventually, he turns to me and asks my name. I tell him it is John, and that I am pleased to make his acquaintance.

 

* * *

 

As time passes, I find that I remember less and less of what I used to, and that what I used to remember seems less important than-- now.

 

I walk for hours, days, years, as I used to-- and sometimes I meet people, and sometimes they speak with me, and more often than not I am alone with my thoughts-- my new thoughts, and these thoughts, this activity, please me. They make me-- happy, a word I am loath to use, since who can judge a man’s happiness? I cannot; but I use the word here because I am happy, I am happy to forget, to turn my mind to more pleasant things besides memories I did not wish in the first place. I find the words that I wish to use and order them as I wish, and Franz, whom I always come upon at some point or another, drags the song these words contain to the surface and plays my pain.

 

I find that once the song is done, I no longer recall from where my pain stemmed.

 

I am glad to let it go.

**Author's Note:**

> AKA, "Franz Schubert and John Keats meet in Heaven."
> 
> Also AKA, "Sarah has spent too much time studying and thinking again."
> 
> ...I like this. Which is odd, since I very rarely like my own writing. But I do. It rings true to me.


End file.
